Two treats: Chocolate and Giant Orchids

The Chocolate-tip moth is a reason to be cheerful, partly on account of its appealing name and partly because its colours and patterning are delightful. Horns and a tail and that neat splash of ruby or dark crimson. It must be one of those cocktail chocolates.

It has an interesting distribution in our relatively small island. We in the South get it now and in May with a second brood in August and September.  It misses out the North but then reappears in Scotland with a smaller population which flies in June and July.

It arrived here with a Frosted Green, also an interesting moth because I think that the green is partly an optical effect rather than the actual colour. Although the moth is greenish from distance, on close inspection it has a very complicated mixture of black and grey scales whose contrast helps the eye to either see or imagine extra colour.  An example of this is currently on show at the Royal Academy in the excellent exhibition of paintings by the 17th century Flemish artist Michaelina Wautier.

Her set of paintings of the five senses, represented by boys doing such things as wrinkling up the nose at an off egg or recoiling from the touch of blood on a cut hand, includes this recorder player whose scarf looks blue but actually has none of the colour. Ultramarine paint was very expensive at the time and Wautier skilfully contrasted a variety of grays to create the illusion. Clever stuff!  And in the case of the Frosted Green, very good for camouflage.

Separately, we fulfilled an ambition last week by visiting the only place in the UK where the Giant Orchid grows, or I should say the only known place. There is a lot in our country's natural world which remains hidden because too few knowledgable explorers are about. We were told about the orchids by one such, the late Christopher Hoskin, and planned to go with him this year to see them. Alas he died last year, a great loss to his friends and the community of those who love Nature.  

We were hectic last month when the plants flowered but got to the site in time to photograph their fine spikes. A real treat, and it was easy to imagine the gentle presence of Chris being there too. He had warned us that the site was extremely steep, especially for those in their seventies, and so it proved. But we slithered down on our behinds and scrabbled and clawed our way back up and left very satisfied.

Giant Orchids grow in the Mediterranean where they earn their name by rising to the height of a metre or more. Not so in England, but they are still impressive. Locals remember them first appearing some 20 years ago, perhaps by deliberate seed-scattering, but they then vanished, only to recur in the early 2020s and flower annually since.